Uma Thurman: Harvey Weinstein ‘pushed me down’

UMA Thurman has broken her silence on alleged sexual predator Harvey Weinstein, revealing the disgraced director physically attacked her in a hotel room.

Speaking to the New York Times, the Kill Bill and Pulp Fiction star revealed how a meeting with Weinstein in his room at the Savoy Hotel in London took a disturbing turn.

"It was such a bat to the head," she recalled.

"He pushed me down. He tried to shove himself on me. He tried to expose himself. He did all kinds of unpleasant things. But he didn't actually put his back into it and force me. You're like an animal wriggling away, like a lizard. I was doing anything I could to get the train back on the track. My track. Not his track."

That wasn't the first time Weinstein, whose company Miramax produced Pulp Fiction and the Kill Bill movies, had sexually harassed her.

Not long before the London incident, the pair met in his Paris hotel room to talk about a script, where he changed into a bathrobe before leading her to a steam room.

"I didn't feel threatened," she recalled. "I thought he was being super idiosyncratic, like this was your kooky, eccentric uncle.

"Then I followed him through a door and it was a steam room. And I was standing there in my full black leather outfit - boots, pants, jacket. And it was so hot and I said, 'This is ridiculous, what are you doing?' And he was getting very flustered and mad and he jumped up and ran out."

Thurman says after the London incident Weinstein sent her a large bunch of flowers with a note that read "You have great instincts".

Soon after, she says, his assistants began calling wanting to line up more meetings to talk about new projects.

She told the New York Times that she returned to the hotel to confront Weinstein.

She says she told him "If you do what you did to me to other people you will lose your career, your reputation and your family, I promise you."

In response he threatened to derail her career, she said.

In a statement to the New York Times through a spokesperson Weinstein admitted "making a pass" at the actress.

"Mr. Weinstein acknowledges making a pass at Ms. Thurman in England after misreading her signals in Paris," the statement said. "He immediately apologised."

Shortly after the New York Times article was published, Weinstein responded by having his publicist release a series of photos that "demonstrate the strong relationship Mr. Weinstein and Ms. Thurman had had over the years."

In the statement, the spokesperson for Weinstein insisted there "was no physical contact during Mr. Weinstein's awkward pass and Mr. Weinstein is saddened and puzzled as to 'why' Ms. Thurman, someone he considers a colleague and a friend, waited 25 years to make these allegations public, noting that he and Ms. Thurman have shared a very close and mutually beneficial working relationship where they have made several very successful film projects together."

It also said "the pictures of their history tell a completely different story".

Thurman said she and Weinstein had a close working relationship leading up to the steam room incident, which she believes contributed to his ability to prey on her.

"I knew him pretty well before he attacked me," she said. "He used to spend hours talking to me about material and complimenting my mind and validating me.

"It possibly made me overlook warning signs. This was my champion. I was never any kind of studio darling. He had a chokehold on the type of films and directors that were right for me."

In the interview, the 47-year-old also revealed she was raped by an actor 20 years her senior not long after she moved to New York City as a 16-year-old to pursue acting.

She said the assault happened when she went back to the man's apartment after meeting at a nightclub under the premise of a nightcap.

"I was ultimately compliant," she remembered.

"I tried to say no, I cried, I did everything I could do. He told me the door was locked but I never ran over and tried the knob. When I got home, I remember I stood in front of the mirror and I looked at my hands and I was so mad at them for not being bloody or bruised. "Something like that tunes the dial one way or another, right? You become more compliant or less compliant, and I think I became less compliant."